Good lord, what the hell is it with some days and drivers. It's like no one has more than 5 hours of sleep Monday night, and then they drive like mindless cattle Tuesday morning.
This morning I'm taking my usual route, running on time for once, but I still drive the speed limit or 10 Km/h more. Everyone, and I'm saying EVERYONE is driving 10 below, what the f#$@! I started looking at people and going "MOOOO!!!"... of course who knows if they could see me through the morning fog that is their own mindlessness.
Then I'm following these 2 jackasses in a raised old 4x4, they're busy yacking away, looking around, checking out girls. They are in the left lane, there's a space of a good 10 cars or more in front of them, and the right lane everyone is driving slow because the $@#(wads up at the lights are creeping around their right-hand turns. These guys obviously don't care about going to work on time, but hey, grab a freakin' brain and get the hell out of the way. Either that or turn up your banjoe music so loud that your frontal lobe implodes. Both are decent suggestions.
Hey all, I have 6 gmail accounts to give out if anyone doesn't have one already.
Leave me a comment or email me at oorgo.b at gmail dot com.
Xavier (almost) 2, late this morning went down for his nap, so taking the chance my wife went to have a shower. Upon coming out of the shower she heard him yelling loudly "You comin'? I was crying!". She said "I'm coming", he says "Ok", pauses and then "I was crying!" again.
She almost busted a gut, and so did I upon hearing the story. In fact I'm laughing again about it now. Kids are hilarious, he was basically saying "Hey, I did all the right things, how come you aren't over here paying attention to me?". Too smart for his own age.
It looks like John Kerry is winning in the internet world.
When you search for "I hate John Kerry" on Google you get approx 898 results, but man... search for "I Hate George Bush" and you get approx. 1680 results.
Why post about this? Because it's lame. And in my opinion, so are the reams of blogs out there bashing around politicians.
Especially the ones who are jumping on the "Kerry said this" "Bush said that" "You're not murrican, yer a dam Demokrat". A good portion of the bloggers are so unbelievably ridiculous, that they might as well be reverting to the 60's word "Commies" for Democrats and "Nazi Warmongers" for Republicans (not sure if that's 60's but hey, whatever) .
It's so fun to find someone to hate right? And beating a dead horse is great fun too; especially the splatting sound it makes when your splintered baseball bat hits it's shattered skull (I'm speaking metaphorically <- for all the less enlightened). After a time you would assume that this would become boring (of course the ass u me joke comes in at this point and you realize you can't assume), but then again realize some people still love Nickelback.
The most exasperating thing to me, is that neither side looks very good. If you stopped a few seconds and pondered, most people would realize that neither government deserves their vote. Maybe if some would get off the bandwagon for a week, turn off the inflammatory blogs, step back and look at things logically, they could generate a sane thought in their head and stop the slander.
For what it's worth, I've purged most of the slant from my blogroll.. I AM Canadian after all. Hey, if we had only 2 parties to vote for you couldn't enjoy hearing speeches from the Marijuana party and other wackos.
A couple of updates on things for those who give a rats ass:
The Car: Well, it's running fine, no running hot, not a single leak, and obviously the sensor for coolant is working fine. I was spraying smelly stuff to attempt to clean out my AC when I found out that my control is fubar'd for the air control; only 2 of the settings don't turn on the AC, you can actually hear it kick in ... on Defrost! Oh, but the smelly stuff didn't help improve the whisper of air coming out of the vents.
The Minidisc player: Found out that Realplayer will transfer files to my NetMD just fine, AND it will run in the background allowing me to do other things without using up all my computer resources. The only drawback is that it doesn't use the group feature, for grouping tunes, but whatever, I can deal with that.
Here's a little hint for all you automobile drivers, when there's a sound that vaguely resembles a tea-kettle coming from under your hood, pull over.
It was a pretty uneventful weekend, mostly uneventful. I had a gig friday, and another one saturday, yadda yadda, and then Sunday morning(ish) went to visit my sister, parents, nephew, brother-in-law, at my sisters place. Everything was fine, had a nice supper, visited my family, listened to my brother-in-law rant about things a bit, listened to my sister rant about my brother-in-law, the usual.
Dad comes to me saying "you may want to add some coolant to your car when you get home", apparently he had been looking under the hood, as mechanic fathers tend to do. I'm like "yeah, ok, no problem Dad", around 8:30-9 I got in the car to warm it up and I noticed the Low Coolant light was on. Ok, so I went into the house, my brother-in-law said "Oh yeah, I found that was disconnected, so I reconnected it, hmm... I wonder if it's faulty". Ok, yeah, with my car I'll definitely believe that.
We started the 1 1/2 hour trip home, got about 1/2 hour into it and on stopping at a stop sign my wife says "What's that? Is that smoke?" Oh great, I look down, the temperature gauge needle is on red, and there's a sound like a tea-kettle eminating from under the hood. I pull over, turn off the car, leave it so the engine fan is running, swear a blue streak, get ou in the rain, pull off the reservoir cap. Dig around in my car, all I can find is a 500 ml bottle of water, pour that in, it doesn't do shit.
Luckily when I got to my sisters I had plugged in my cell-phone to charge, so I pulled that out, called my Dad. He came by after about 40 minutes, he and my brother-in-law poured 4 litres or more of fluid in, she had been BONE DRY. Of course my bro-in-law swore a fair amount and I'm sure on the way home he ranted to my dad how I should take better care of my car.
Here are a couple things that don't make sense:
1) My car was running fine, not even running warm, before I got there, why did it suddenly overheat?
2) Where did the antifreeze go? There's no visible leak, and the exhaust doesn't smell bad.
While we had been sitting on the side of the road, lights off, blinkers on, dome light on (sporadically), hood up, I think 4 people that drove by stopped, re-enforcing my view of humanity. No one carries anti-freeze though, so I would have been stuck out there all night, in the middle of nowhere, or I would have been paying some towtruck, or signing up for AMA on the fly. Once again I owe my Dad big time for coming out to save my ass. Thanks again Dad.
Wil Wheaton surprises me all the time. His insight on everyday things and his humanistic writing ability are uncharacteristic of a geek. It's like he gets outside and talks to people or something
Todays post about his dad titled the joker describes mine, and many others relationships with their dads. My dad had a habit of saying cheesy jokes, then when you didn't laugh he repeated it.
Unfortunately at the time, me and my sisters didn't really appreciate him for all the great things that he did for us. I think we're just starting to catch up with the "thank you"s now, after 10 or so years. When we "growup" I think most people tend to look back and see what an ass they were, and regret. Hey, you're kids right? I think the cycle is unending, your kids will do the exact same thing to you, and their kids to them. What's funny is that if you would have talked to me about this very thing when I was a kid I would have ignored you.
Shank made a great post about family trips, it was like I was there... 5 in a car, crammed, sweaty, cranky, bored. No money to eat at places, no time to stop. One thing different is we knew not to push things too far, or Mom was the punisher. She was a quick draw on the belt, I tell you!
How would you like to be told that if you don't change what you're doing, that in less than 50 years or so you were looking at massive changes in your climate. Imagine intense heat in the summer, and torrential downpours, alongside of drought, and then imagine that in Europe, not an equatorial country. It's a little scary.
I won't go into great detail, but I was at my brother-in-law's wedding on the weekend up in Grande Prairie. The wedding itself was ok, beautiful bride, lovely weather, drunken relatives, what else is new, but the drama around the entire event just blew my mind.
I came up with some questions, because I won't spout out the details of the insanity:
Why is it that families let things that happened decades ago interfere with the current times? How are you letting down your guard or damaging your precious image when you say that you're sorry, and/or that you made a mistake? Why is it so easy to forgive others, but so hard to forgive your own brothers/sisters/parents? Why do some parents treat their own daughters worse than they would treat a ditch digger that was employed with them? What kind of game are you playing when you think you have to compete with your own sister over your mothers attention? How the f#$@ can some people be so f#$@ing thoughtless?
news@nature.com - Gene therapy cures monkeys of laziness
Ok, 2 things to ponder here... are the monkeys like humans, or are humans like monkeys? Are procrastinating humans somewhat throwbacks, or are workaholics mutants? I favor the mutant theory, being an obsessive procrastinator myself.
I was asked at work to make up a bio at work, here's what I came up with :
Dave moved to Edmonton from St. Paul at 19, with dreams of prostitutes and keggers. Later on he found out he would have to work, which bummed him out. He finally gave in and went to Grant MacEwan and took music. Of course after finding no work, and existing off of spoiled ham, Dave resorted to working with his nemesis: Computers. Dave joined a slaveship for 2 ½ years, chained to a desk and a phone and brow beaten into submission, finally escaping there to join his current employer, and has been happy ever since.
So, I received a NetMD for Christmas last year, it's good, albeit a little slow to burn cds. Saturday after I zoomed through installing my new card stereo I figured I'd burn some minidiscs, as my new deck has an AUX input. Little did I know I had begun the journey of the damned.
Sony, in their infinite near-sightedness, provides a software called Sonicstage to use with your NetMD. The Sonicstage software also installs about 4 or 5 other products, updater, conversion program, the main program, drivers.
Here are the list of problems with the initial setup:
a) You can't select where 1/2 the programs are installing, they automatically install to C:
b) Even when you select the install location it still installs many files to C: (my C drive has limited space, and is primarily for OS use only).
Ok, so I was having some odd problems with the version I installed off the CD that came with the NetMD, so of course I logically thought to upgrade to the newest version. Downloaded 2.x from Sony, installed it, it ran for a good 30 seconds, then hard reset my computer. GREAT! I thought "well, it must be something I did", so I tried it again with the same result.
Uninstalled 2.x, cleaned it entirely off my computer, reinstalled it, started it up, same thing, hard reset after about 30 secs.
I proceeded to swear a blue streak, uninstalled and cleaned it off again (so I thought). Installed the OLD version again off disk, installed the next update, then the next update after that. Program starts up, seemingly runs ok, but then says it doesn't support mp3!!!! wtf... swore another blue streak.
Uninstalled, cleaned it off, ran a reg fixer program, rebooted (for the 40th or so time), installed the old version, made sure it worked, updated it, and now it works. I'm sticking to the old 1.553 for awhile, unless I feel like wasting another day, and trying to update it to 2.x.
Oh, and the first "Update" (full install) actually requires the old version to be there, even though it proceeds to uninstall it. If this is supposed to be some sort of security device I don't know why it's implemented, who the fuck would want to use this software for anything other than what they're FORCED to use it for, their NetMD.
SO far I think I've surmised that you must start from the beginning and proceed to each update sequentially... it would have been fucking nice to have been told that somewhere along they way by Sony.
Yesterday I posted about Katie.com, and amazingly enough today Penguin Group (USA) Inc. has retitled the book "A Girl's Life Online". Maybe the 75/159 bad customer reviews on Amazon.com regarding this story had some impact (looks like Amazon has deleted most of the comments).
(pulled from Slashdot)
Glad that it's finally resolved, and hopefully it won't effect the actual sale of the book, the topic is important and these types of stories need to be told.
He's gone, 3 years gone, and no matter what I do I can never bring him back.
I didn't know him well, and he never saw my face but that didn't matter, he was still a part of me. I loved him and I love him still.
Today my next born put a rose on his grave, for his brother who now looks over him. I'm pretty sure they've talked, and I know he looks over us.
We celebrate the time we did have, 37 wonderful weeks of joy.
Happy Birthday Tristan
In my books when you register a domain, that domain becomes your property, until such time as the registration expires, or you sell it/give it to another party.
Such is not the case with Katie Jones, if you haven't heard the story yet, go to her site, it's worth the read.
If you wrote a book with a phone number in it that connected to an actual person, and told a story about how the person at that number was a molester/murderer/drug dealer/bad guy or had been sexually assaulted. Subsequently the person at the other end of the scenario received harassing, or unending phone calls regarding the book. YOU WOULD BE SUED.
Why is this not the same as titling a book a domain name that you do not own, and then ignoring any requests from the owner to change it. AND THEN proceed to attempt to pressure the owner of the domain to give it up. The excuse made is the domain was not "trademarked", in other words the personal web domains are there for the easy takeover of corporations on whim of a marketing team.
He's very cool, he went to Comic-Con and bought everybody something, and knowing that I dig Too Much Coffee Man he bought me a sweet 20 oz. mug with TMCM on it. It holds about 1/4 a pot of coffee... it's PERFECT.
Have I mentioned I dig my job?
No posts for 5 days, I had a long weekend, made extra long by graciously recieving friday off as well. As well I spent not one minute in a loud club playing trumpet all weekend, it was my weekend of solitude. It was sweet.
I spent Friday night getting nothing accomplished, and doing it extremely well. My buddy Dan came by at about 9 and picked me up with this sweet ride he was driving, a Cadillac CTS loaded. His friend rented it and paid him to drive them around Friday night. We went to Second Cup downtown for coffee, funny the looks you get from people when you are driving a $50K vehicle. I brought along a mixed salsa cd to class up his ride even more. Got home about 11:30 or so, drank Sleemans Cream Ale and played Neverwinter Nights until about 3:30 am.
Got up at 9:30 on Saturday, took the Grand Am to the shop to get an oil change and get them to look at the spark plugs, and tires. The thing bogs out when it's cold and you touch the gas, and there is (was) a vibration at about 100-110 km/h. No vibration now, he balanced the tires but he said the plugs were fine, I think it's the MAF sensor, apparently that's a well known issue with that year and model.
After picking up the GA we grudgingly took back the Cadillac and then headed down to XS Cargo to look at a cheap car stereo. Picked up a Koss cd deck for $50, which apparently is a good deal (sure it's refurbished, but whatever). Then on the way back stopped at a cool hobby store on Argyll and Gateway and looked at trains, rockets, remote controlled tanks.
Sunday I went kinda nuts, woke up at 11:30, drank some coffee, had a couple of waffles compiled a cd full of crazy jazz trumpet music which was background music while I cleaned until 4. I got through a stack of cooking sheets that had been sittin around for awhile, and cleaned the entire tub and surround (which was complete hell). At 4 I went to a poorly attended band rehearsal, but stuck around for Erin's famous cheeseburgers, and Mauricio's 7 year old Cuban rum... oh man... yum.
Oh, and did I mention that Amber and Xavier were up in Grande Prairie for the weekend? Yep, they came home Sunday about 8... pure solitude for almost 2 full days.